Award Data

Replacement of petroleum based vehicles with fuel cell electric vehicles operating on hydrogen produced from domestically available resources would dramatically decrease emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants as well as reduce dependence on oil from politically volatile regions of the world. One major inhibitor to a hydrogen society is the lack of infrastructure, which requires hydroge ...

The power output of the high power lasers used in physics research is limited by the materials available for making gain media. Future increases in power require new and better materials. Operation at high power creates great thermal stresses that can lead to birefringence, thermal lensing or physical damage to the host. Effective cooling and small temperature gradients are critical for achieving ...

In order to make large scale commercial production of microalgae based commodity food and fuel products, significant strides in algal productivity need to be achieved. With current regulatory guidelines, large scale outdoor cultivation of microalgae for these products restricts the use of transgenic algal strains, which in the laboratory thus far have been the primary strategy taken to effectively ...

Vast amounts of impaired waters are produced in gas and oil wells. Energy-efficient desalination systems are needed to treat these waters to produce fresh water and concentrated brines. Mineral recovery systems can also yield valuable critical materials as byproducts. Savengy Technologies and University of Central Florida (UCF) will develop and commercialize an energy efficient system to treat sha ...

Direct Solar in partnership with Colorado State University's Next Generation PV Center (NGPV) and H. B. Fuller Company will develop a new solar module architecture and manufacturing process optimized for crystalline silicon (c-Si) modules that significantly reduces manufacturing costs and improves reliability. The outcome of this program will be a new c-Si module design, streamlined manufacturing ...

Tristructural isotropic (TRISO) fuel is a key component of advanced small modular nuclear fission reactors due to its inherent safety at high temperatures and irradiation levels and decreased proliferation risk relative to current reactor fuels. A more efficient cooling method for TRISO fuel compacts would increase heat transfer, allow for an increase in fuel density, and further improve accident ...

It is attractive therefore to turn Carbon dioxide (𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2) which is typically considered a pollutant, into a valuable industrial resource. Plasma has long been known as an attractive method of treating 𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2 in order to produce other industrial feedstocks such as CO. For this process to be industrially viable, plasma treatment of 𝐶𝐶𝑂𝑂2 must be improved to minimiz ...

Idaho National Laboratory (INL), under funding from the Critical Materials Institute, has developed a US patented technology to reclaim valuable metals from waste electronic equipment. The Electrochemical Recycling Electronic Constituents of Value (E-RECOV) method uses an electrochemical cell to efficiently recover the bulk of metals from discarded electronics, leading to more complete recycling o ...

Over 1 billion people suffer from the effects of water scarcity. The vast majority of those affected live near a coastline in developing countries, on islands, and in remote communities. To satisfy the potable water needs of a growing world population, experts agree that seawater desalination on a large scale is required. Near-shore ocean waves provide an inexhaustible, consistent, and widely dist ...

High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) materials have excellent mechanical and electrical properties. They are very attractive for various industrial applications such as power cables and high field, high current superconducting magnets. Magnets made with these materials could play a key role in the commercialization of fusion energy machines. However, HTS materials have very slow normal zone prop ...